Home visits - how are they done? : - A focus group study of social workers knowledge and practice regarding home visits in child welfare investigations

The aim of this study was to examine what knowledge social workers express about home visits in child welfare investigations and how they know what to do. Sixteen social workers who work with social investigations concerning children were asked to discuss the topic home visit in three focus group interviews in three different municipalities in southern Sweden. The social workers in our focus group interviews mainly discussed the purpose of the home visit, what social workers do during home visits and furthermore their opinions about guidelines and policy documents regarding the home visit. To get an understanding of what type of knowledge is the basis for social workers use of the home visit, we used Polanyi's concept of 'tacit knowing' as well as the Aristotelian theory of knowledge containing three forms of knowledge, that is, episteme, techne and fronesis. We found that the displaying of ‘tacit knowing’ was a consistent feature in all groups, as they had difficulty expressing their knowledge use. This may be considered as an effect of their knowledge being deeply incorporated into them as social workers. Our observations also indicate that the social workers mostly use the form of knowledge fronesis which is aimed at the common sense and the practical wisdom. Evidence for this was found in how respondents frequently described how they observe the interpersonal interaction, and that they sense the home's atmosphere to get a picture of the child's situation